5 more slow food Christmas gift ideas

Readers weigh in with their ideas on what should go under the tree of your favorite slow foodie.

Last week’s post on Christmas gifts for slow food advocates got some good response. Many readers piped up with additional ideas for gifts, so I thought I’d do a second post with more Christmas gifts for slow foodies. There are lots of homemade ideas here — something that slow food advocates really like.

Homemade butter: Porter suggested making homemade butter with local cream and gifting it in a mason jar. She said she likes to add herbes de Provence to it and pointed us to a recipe at slowchristmas.org.

Homemade dry soup mixes: Melodie suggested putting dried ingredients like barley, beans, rice and spices in a jar along with a recipe that explains how to cook the soup. I found a couple of recipes for a soup mix like this you could try — Chicken Noodle or Minestrone. If you search for “dry soup mix recipes,” you’ll come up with lots of them.

Homemade pickles: I think you probably would have had to have planned ahead for this one, but with this year’s great cucumber harvest, Kanas thinks homemade pickles would be a great gift. If the harvest is good again next year, maybe you can make pickles in the summer and get a great jump on your holiday preparations.

Locally made jams and condiments: Lynn thinks this is a good idea, and so do I. I know that many of my local farm markets are open through Christmas and they carry homemade jams and condiments that either are made there on the premises or made by local producers.

A snail: File this one under "for the slow food advocate who has everything else." One of my Twitter followers, farmbrarian, suggested a decorative snail to represent the Slow Food mantra in the kitchen.